There's this restaurant my parents and I went to for lunch on Saturday. It sells Hong Kong food. Ok, anyway, the main point is the tea, to be more specific, + the tea cup. They ordered a pot of rose tea. Literally rose. That was the first time I tasted a rose. I am not a very great supporter of any form of tea, unlike my parents. They loved it but found themselves panicking about the caffeine after finishing the pot. They were worried they were going to spend the entire night tossing and turning, wide awake and staring at each other.

The tea came in this teapot which was transparent, with this container with holes to filter the rose and other bits of unknown herbs. It sat on this teapot holder, also transparent with a fire under to keep it warm. It also had one tea cup, with free flow of hot water. We didn't manage to get more cups because then we would have to drink 3 pots of roses. A nightmare. I'd never be able to face another rose. So you can imagine how we were passing around the tea cup.

The tea cup. It was also transparent. And this is where the fun part comes in. The tea cup was shaped like an oval that would look fat rather than tall. It had 2 layers, one in side and another layer of the cup outside, converging at the rim. The tea cup was not hot even though there was tea inside. My parents reacted at the same time after seeing it, but very differently.  My mom was exclaiming that it was so nice, "hey look! There're 2 cups in this cup! And it's not hot! ... So cute, right!?" Dad, on the other hand, had a big, rare, smile on his face and looked at me, probably trying to test if telepathy exists. "Vacuum!" and he paused, waiting for me to continue his scientific reply. Mom was looking rather confused. So I had to give her a brief lecture to jog her memory. Conduction and convection only take place when there are molecules. The double-walled cup helps to prevent heat transfer by conduction and convection since there are no molecules in vacuum. Hence, only radiation takes place and it does not result in much radiation transferred. This illustrates the disparity in thought process in my house. The bane of this cup is that any unsuspecting/blur person like me would just assume the tea is not hot and start gulping it carelessly. This results in a bad shock and a sore tongue. That was a personal experience.

Currently, Jean is watching Harry Potter, I think the second book, in German. It's so exclusive because the rest of the population here (3/4) can't make anything out of it. But it's good not understanding, because I suddenly realised the incidental music (program music, also the movie soundtrack) is quite interesting. How does the composer manage to think of such random music to suit the mood and atmosphere? And how do they tie all the sounds in so nicely? I also managed to identify some of the limited vocabulary list of German words I knew. I learnt those when Jean kept starting conversations with me in German, bombarding me with questions and not caring if I understood or not. It's like trying to talk to something a only little more responsive than a wall.

Yay it's Tuesday! It's the most relaxing day of my week. Math lesson was rather funny today. Wednesday Thrusday Friday.

I just noticed that I'm turning the volume of the ipod roughly 20% higher compared to a few months ago. Another worrying matter: my parents tell me my relatively new violin is getting louder and louder.

PLEASE SPEED READ THE FOLLOWING:

That's cus it's a literally new one - unused before. So it becomes more seasoned and settled when I exercise it (prescribed steps from my teacher), making the sound come out more. It's called, growing your violin. My teacher prefers old violins cus they are more seasoned in sound. But I like new ones cus I get to "train" them. So she would be picking based on the sound at its peak, while I would be choosing based on it's potential to produce good sound. Practically, the choose-based-on-potential would be more value for money because there is some sort of extra surprise element in it that shows itself after practicing on it. Some sort of motivation.

SLOW DOWN NOW...

But anyway, back to the point. The violin is getting louder, but I don't find it getting louder, in fact, softer. I think my ear is almost a gone case. Whenever my mom enters my room during violin practice, she keeps asking me how I can stand the loudness. And nowadays, I can't be bothered to chuck the ear plug into my ear because it makes everything sound so weird my brain hurts. Gah.. My next ear check is in September. I hope I don't do too badly in the ear test. They don't test more than 8kHz. That time Mr Chua let everyone listen to the wave generator thingy, I couldn't hear at 14kHz. And that's also when I started panicking because I realised I was the deafest in class, unless there were others who didn't bother to put up their hand as well.

I don't want PE tomorrow. I want to race with a snail, and boost its ego a bit. The champion of the World SNail Racing Championship had an amazing speed of 0.013m/s.

save the violin concerto

I'm not done with homework. Actually, the last bit of it. The one on CME: Responsible Parenting research. I don't understand why people my age need to researching on this very foreign topic.
I know my parents did their own research before, especially my dad. I used to cry 2 hours every night before sleeping. That was roughly 15 years ago, before Jean existed. So he would sit by his bed and read his book, "Why do Babies Cry?" while trying to drown out the noise and hopefully find some remedy to his nightly frustration. But still, gah the research...

Nowadays I find myself doing violin practice in my toilet cus there's a big-enough mirror in there. Just to correct my bowing. I can't draw a completely straight bow, parallel to the bridge all the time. And that's affecting my sound. While I did learn of some formula to get the bow straight, it's hard to apply all the time and in every unique situation. I've been enduring nearly 3 months of intensive technique building and I hope it works. All in a bid to save Mozart's violin concerto. Except for that, all the other dip pieces, including that concerto's cadenza, are in relatively alright shape. Mozart's music is decievingly easy. He's so detailed.. I think he's an ISTJ. Like jy..

News in a day

Good day, fellow human beans! This is astrknot reporting for Blah Blah Blah... Today, yesterday, and the day before...

1. Top executives living in Conneticut, USA are being stalked. They consist of executives who worked for AIG (the company that recently went bankrupt). So people in that area are not happy with them and want to voice their woes directly to them. Bus protests were organised and those executives were advised to go out in pairs, don't go out at night etc. Most of them live in Wilton, Fairfield County in Connecticut. This impacted me because it's where I used to live when dad was posted to USA to work years ago. It made me think of how much times have changed, where a once peaceful neighbourhood could become so scary after a financial crisis. I remember that it was quite safe around that area, but now, it's a terrorizing place.

Next,

2. WWW (World Wide Web) turned 20 yesterday. It's amazing how much the internet has changed our lives. Thanks to the WWW, you can see my post now, and I can type this with confidence that it will land somewhere. But of course while the genius invention of the WWW by some software scientists has made recieving information so much easier for every one, some things like cyber bullying and copyright issues still exist. Globalisation.

Moving on,

3. Scientists have found a way to read minds by looking at brain activity (like measuring bllod flow etc). That means they can read our memories. This is useful for ageing people like me who forget things easily (no, jk). It's useful for researching on Alzheimer's disease cus the folks tend to forget their past. It's also useful for interogating suspects. While it's going to take a while before we can use that technology to read anyone's mind very fast, it will eventually happen and the world is going to face more ethical problems. Private life can be intruded and how much should we read? But somehow after reading this, I think the bible is very true in what says is going to happen when the world is ending and Jesus is coming. What are christians doing about it?

Lastly,

4. A random article on 25 random things about Singapore youth.
http://www.asiaone.com/News/Education/Story/A1Story20090316-128842.html
I think it is a good reflection of me, and fellow youth. Couldn't help but feel guilty yet proud while reading this.

On a sad note, school is continuing in 2 days. I can't wait for the next holiday. But that means I have to face MYE first.

Never give up, even when things are looking hopeless

That's all, folks. This has been Astroknot reporting for 3Blah .. Good bye.

Life without parents at home

My parents left for Taiwan, to be more exact, Taipei, on Monday morning. Since I had to wake up early for Chinese intensive, I was able to catch them before they left. Jean, on the other hand, was sound asleep. My mom specially printed out a 4-page household chore manual for Jean and I and decorated the fridge with it. It turned out pretty useful in the days that followed.

Sorry, side track a bit. Chinese intensive was horrible. 4 hours of Chinese a day (not including homework) can really kill a significant portion of my brain cells. Or maybe I just have nothing to lose. 7 compos and 6 Paper 2s, including homework. I'm thankful I managed to do some homework during camp free time. I even managed to activate zhongling ds and andrew to help me with my gong han.

Monday night was probably the most lonely night in my entire history. I went back home at 11pm cus of Chinese intensive in the morning. Jean stayed over at the camp. Mom called me to check if I was still alive. No kidding, more than just my sruvival. Once I was home, I was faced with chores. Washing clothes, hanging them, folding clothes, feeding the fish, replnishing the fish tank water (my dad made it irrigate plants from the tank so there are more nutrients), emptying the dustbins and countless other tasks. I was paranoid about forgetting any thing. This home alone adventure let me learn to be more responsible. If I left anything out of place, or didn't do what I was supposed to do, I'd have to somehow survive the consequences. No parents to help fix up things for me, or put things back to normal. It's the feeling like, anything I do will affect my survival. It was also weird to go sleep and remember that I'm the only one in the house. Anyway, I managed to survive till the next morning. Slept for 4 hours.

The house key is also a stressor. Before I go out, I always triple check that I'm carrying the keys. Cus my door is the type where once it slams shut, it's locked from the outside, so you can imgaine how conscious I am before closing the door.

Tuesday was similar to Monday, except camp was increasingly eventful. I had to lead the special worship session (1 hour plus) after I came from school. So I quickly chionged down my lunch and practiced with Jean (she was on the piano, and I think she can play/improvise better than when she's set to a score. maybe she should have picked up piano earlier). The session did not go as I had planned, in fact, even better. The sharing slots put in had rather good response. It was just very different from other sharings in church. People were really honest and it was quite incredible knowing how camp had changed some lives. I admit the camp comm was really quite afraid of how the camp would turn out at first. March is a hectic holiday but we decided to go on with it. But I think my opinion about the camp changed a lot. This camp was quite different from the past tf camps for me. Though there was a considerably smaller group (around 16-18 of us), it was the most sincere one, and that's probably the advantage of a smaller group.

There was the traditional BBQ and night games - the game where everyone has to run around the whole Changi chalet area (the boardwalk included) and find clues to determine the murderer. I think this time, the difficulty level was relatively higher. It took my group 1 hour to find the first clue. Jean and I had to leave at around 12am+ to go home, leaving Jacky and zhongling ds to finish off the last 6 clues. My group had a lot of people who left early cus of school. They played till 2.30am. I will find out more from jacky on how it went some time. I think jean gave a detailed-enough recount of the games. But anyway, my legs were really jelly-like after all the running during the night games. I think I covered at least 4km. Poor people who stayed till the games ended.

Note: time now on where my recount is - 1am Wednesday.
So this morning, it was slightly better because Jean was at home to help me with house chores. Tried to finish up everything even though we were in a rather groggy state of mind. At least it didn't seem so quiet and lonely at home. Managed to sleep at 3am+ and survived till later in the morning. Slept for 3 hours.

Same thing on Wednesday, except after Chinese intensive, didn't have to go for camp cus they checked out at 10am. Had strings from 1.30 - 5.30pm. The sun really does something to Jane. She kept laughing and telling jokes. Natalie and i were somewhat stunned. Anyway, after strings, grandparents picked me up for dinner at their house. I was surprised to find Jensen in the car. He rarely takes the initiative to go out. Most of the time, it's Jerome, the super active one.

After that, packed Jerome along and went down to Taka (outside) to watch the string and guitar ensemble perform. Got to hear their SYF pieces. The conductor isn't conducting for them for SYF, strings I mean. And I realised that the first column of violin ones really move a lot. A lot. Smss ensemble needs some structured choreography to move. I hope MGS gets gold with honours. Not so jean can gloat about it at home, but so that smss can get silver. I think their ensemble is like smss's, just that their's is a larger version of it. They, too, face an over crowding violin 2 population and an ageing overall population. But of course, they overpower us in terms of volume and concentration of quality. I met Natalie there. We keep bumping into each other for MGSensemble concerts. Loyal supporters, or rather, spies for the SYF.

I managed to sleep at 1am that night clinched 7 hours of much needed sleep. Today was mainly spent completing my pile of homework. I think I'm 70% completed, but there's still enough to keep me entertained for the rest of the holiday.

And so yay, my parents should be home tomorrow, and life can return to normal. I won't have to worry to much about house hold chores. This experience was enjoyable and challenging.

Day 1 of camp today was really fun. Everyone else is supposed to be sleeping there now, but it's a known fact they aren't. First day is always like this, but the sleepiness increases linearly with the number of days. that means by Wednesday, everyone will be dead tired, not to mention night games till 12am+++. Last time's lasted till 3am and I stayed up with some others to play cards till morning.

After church, had to print some stuff in the office with Jacky, then ate a quick lunch. Then, loaded in the keyboard, projector and all the other stuff into the car and church van. We reached earlier than the check in time and went to explore the old Changi hospital. It was quite run down and the the comm ppl who receed the place didn't dare to enter. So we went in as a rather large group and scared all the ghosts away. There was graffiti on the walls and some anti-christ symbols, which increased the scariness level. I tried to find the mortuary, but the place was really run down. There were stuff all over the floor, bats inside, broken glass windows and scary grafitti on the walls. Anyway, this is evidence that I survived the adventure.

Jacky is the camp chief, me - vice, andrew and jasmine - programmes and time keeper, rui quan and yuxin - logistics. And rui quan is in charge of food too, which is a bit risky.. especially if there is prawn or crab.. Theme this year is Be still. Taken from Psalms, the one about being still, and knowing that God is God. Theme song was quite easy to decide - Still. Happened to see that in Ck's blog not long ago. Supposed to be chinese based, but had no choice but to choose English because the words are more meaningful.

The night games was the highlight of today. Fruit captains ball. At night. So we could hardly see the bits of food flying around. We played captains ball with everything else except a ball. First level was papaya. It survived about three crash landings on the ground before splitting up and sending bits of flesh and juice squirting everywhere. Whenever I wanted to clap, papaya juice would start spraying into my face. And if you happened to miss the papaya bit being flung around, your shirt would kenna the papaya. We played until there was hardly and throwable piece of papaya bit left before renewing papaya. After another round of level one, we moved on to cabbage. This one has better because it wasn't juicy. We played through all the layers of the cabbage. The wonderful thing - it can bounce a bit. There was less mess and so the game finally went back to a near normal roughness. Next level, orange. Great first few throws. When it started cracking up, there was a nice aromatic orange fragrance. Then when it finally got thrown to its death, we ended up showering each other with orange juice. Next, we had mango. It was really sticky, but it meant better grip. Similar to the papaya, but i think it ended it's life after someone threw the last bit into a drain. Then, we had eggs. That was probably the hardest level. We wrapped the egg in a plastic bag thing, then poked holes for the insides to squirt out. It died very very fast. Shorter life span and it was quite disgusting to hold. After the captains fruit game, everyone was covered in some sort of salad mess.

Then, we played water bomb using the small bags (the types with strings at the top). The game hadn't even officially started and people were already sparking off water wars. The water bomb game helped to rinse everyone, including the ground. I hope there isn't an ant invasion tomorrow. Everyone was very drenched but they could go take a shower. on the other hand, Jean and I didn't bother bringing a towel and had to sit in our parents' car later. So we just rinsed our self, walked around a bit and then changed. My mom didn't even notice anything was amiss when we entered the car. Thankfully, she didn't see us throwing eggs at each other, or else I would have died and would have had to walk all the way home.

Tomorrow, Chinese intensive till 12. Then grandparents will pick me up to send me to camp. Think they'll be in the middle of the very amazing race. Then, come home again after the activities. Sigh.. I am the vice camp chief but MIA.

yay

Today is Friday the 13th, again. I find last month and this month very fascinating, because it's like a repeat. Last month, it was exactly Friday the 13th too. Ok, enough about fascinating dates.

Jie Ying finally posted and it was such a historical moment I decided to dedicate this paragraph to it.

SYF is on the 29th of April. We're the last school to perform, which means Jean is going to be able to see me. Last year, I got to see her school on the tiny TV screen outside the hall. This year, we're playing the the same piece MGS played the last SYF - the divertimento by Mozart. I think we sound much better than 2 years ago, and there was definitely improvement. But in case there are any CCA friends reading this, please don't get complacent ok, there's been improvement, but there's always enough room for more.

I get tortured by 2, and potentially 3 juniors during CCA. Joan and Serene have an obsession with tickling the poor me, and are in the process of passing on their gangster skills to their new recruit - Nicole. I must say they're really good gang leaders. And my aim for the remainder of my days is to manage to keep out of their gangster phonebook, just in case I end up like Joycelyn and get prank called. Well, I was warned.

If people didn't pay so much attention to their scores while playing, I'm sure they would have plenty to look at, and laugh at. The following content is an insight of what happens during a tutti session, among my neighbouring people. After Mr L corrected the L section of the A-Roving, whenever violin ones and twos played that part, they would jump slightly on their seats while trying to get the ascent on the up bow. It just looks funny when the usually calm and composed ensemble suddenly experiences a violent jerk in the upper strings. Ariela and I had a nice time laughing, but sadly, I'm one of them who cannot help but include the unusual choreography in my otherwise constantly dead playing. Then Mr L said something like "Come on, bar 20" and my hearing went a little off. Actually, I thought it was just me. But then thankfully, Ariela boosted my ear's ego and asked if he said "Come on, baby". It was quite hilarious. After I finish my noise-making, I start Ssshh-ing everyone else. Then because you usually need a lot of breath labour-effectively sshh people (in a single breath), Ariela said I was deflating. I immediately thought I was some talking balloon.

Got back progress report. I'm happy, but I know I can do better next time. Most of the results were just based on one or a few tests, so not that conclusive. But still, thank God. I think the job of a Christian student is to prove to the world that spending 13hours in church a week is not going to kill. In fact, you'd be blessed, and I think I have been. Put God first and you'll be rewarded. Just a gentle reminder to all Christians, don't miss out QT.

At 6.30pm, there was the Meet the Parents session, or more of meet the students. Mom came down and listened to the talk. Poor people like Evangeline who went home and came back had to make the trip all the way here to endure 20mins of talking, and then go home. The cut off points for JCs are so low. And I regret not having higher Chinese, because that means I have no chance of getting 3 points. Minimum I can get would be 4 and that is already something quite unimaginable. My parents' JCs are out of reach for me, and that feels like each generation is getting less MOE-brainy. Sigh, so my mom helped me to target NJC. At first she was aiming at ACJC. As for me, I will just go to whichever JC willing to take me in. I told my mom the talk sounded like a usual morning devotion. She was surprised and said it sounded rather intimidating, like our whole cohort was in serious trouble for the O levels. Then she started recounting in the car how time has passed so quickly. "When you're over 20, time flies". No wonder I waited so long to be in Sec 4. She said that I finally learnt how to hold my milk bottle when I was 9 months old. She and dad were so happy because it meant that they wouldn't have to hold it for me anymore. At first they hated it when I had a usual routine of crying 2 hours every night before sleeping, but they finally appreciated it when jean came along. Hers can cause slight deafness.

Next week is the March holiday. Chinese intensive from 8-12 from Mon-Wed. There's TF camp from Sunday to Wednesday. So I'll go to school then grandparents will send me to Changi. Parents will be having their own holiday in Taiwan. This is the first time their depositing Jean and I in Sg while they go out, far away, to have their own fun. My mom typed out a 4 page long instruction manual on how to survive at home, the house chores, and emergency procedures, in case they don't make it back. It's going to be a fun experience I hope, but of course under grandparent supervision. They'll be checking on us once in a while, but most of the time will be spent at camp.

One fine saturday

Saturday is a nice day. Today, jiao you at Marina Barrage. Set off with Jean to meet andrew and jian ling at the MRT. It was the first time I was on time and Andrew was late. But he managed to be exactly 8 minutes late, as he had warned me earlier. Sigh, his being-late skill is much better than mine. Then we had lunch, went grocery shopping and then went to recee the barrage. Just as we walked out of Marina Bay MRT station, it started to rain, with a crescendo. But we were so optimistic we just decided to walk to the shuttle bus stop (which had no shelter) and had to stand under one roof. Jl was the only one who faithfully brought an umbrella and so we had to squeeze under it. The underlying reason: she thinks she is soluble in water (reminds me of properties of an ionic structure). We panicked and decided to pray. Then we lazed in the cafe or something like that and took a group pic in the exhibition thing. It's quite cool. I went there last year with parents, Andrew dreaded his learning journey there, so jl and jean were the only ones who went to explore the thing fully. They were so fascinated by the epostcard thing they insisted on taking a picture for memorial pruposes. Treated each other to ice cream and fries before starting the jiao you at 3.30. It started to rain again so we had to improvse and hold our activities under shelter. It wasn't affected much though, thankfully. There was probably rain for a reason: to make it a little more cooling, and anyway we didn't really need the outdoors.

After jiao you, had camp planning meeting. Camp is in about a week. I'll have to go back to school for chinese intensive from 8-12 every morning, then go for camp. Then ate dinner together at lao pa sat before we went home. Learnt a lot about the start of jc life from yuxin and jacky. I think the PE lessons, (though diff schools) are quite torturing. I don't look forward to that. But nevermind, I shall not entertain myself with those thoughts now.

I'm too tired to type now. The rest of what happened (the jiao you part) is on Jean's blog I think.